willkinton247's saved articles

CARB puts California at a HUGE disadvantage here. While my state is not anywhere near the top of the list (due to our oh-so-straight roads) the big advantage Florida has is it’s complete lack of inspections on cars. When I imported my Cappuccino last year, in the entire process just one lady looked at only the VIN… Read more

You must be kidding. California has the strictest laws for cars and all sorts of noise and BS rules that aren’t present in basically all the mid-west and South. Read more

Because shut up, Kyle. Read more

This article’s summary of this research is so bad that it borders on willful falsehood. Here’s the actual result from the study: Read more

I bet the pilots were giddily requesting their ground speed readout from ATC, only to be one-upped by some asshole in an SR-71. 

UPDATE A reader emailed me to explain why this happened... apparently there was a strong initiative around “free speech” in Maine and that’s basically how we ended up with the no screening system up there. fascinating. Read more

Also, the author’s claim that the tax adds about 10 cents a gallon is incorrect. For diesel, its about 32 cents a gallon. For gasoline, its around 20 cents a gallon. 

It should be way more present in this article that the fuel taxes is just the tip of the issue and that the government defied the population. Read more

Exactly how do they know this is a “carrier killah”? I used to volunteer on a WW2 era carrier and that thing was absolutely honeycombed with 100's of individual watertight compartments. If you read about the history of WW2 battles involving carriers those things would get the absolute shit pounded out of them with… Read more

Come on, 9 sunk nuclear submarines in history, we don’t have enough of a data point to infer they make inferior...oh wait, 7 of them were Russian or Soviet? Yea, fuck that ride.

Agreed, but they don’t have the cash to build enough of the them, or keep them running.  They burn cash like crazy and can’t build enough of everything to keep up.

If you haven’t yet read Blind Man’s Bluff, stop what you’re doing and go get a copy. The Russian Navy was always, ALWAYS inferior to the USN. Their subs were noisy, poorly built and maintained even worse. Funny story - After Reagan was elected, he ordered the Navy to show them we could eliminate their undersea…

Is this one of those situations where we are really scared of something that isn’t all that awesome? I don’t have a technical opinion of this because I have no submarine knowledge, but I seem to remember a story where everyone was super scared of the MiG and then once we got our hands on one it was kind of… Read more

Admit it, Kyle, you cribbed this from Combat Arms magazine, Oct. 1984. Read more

Cool. Let them spend billions on attack submarines that won’t get used (we can all hope.) I remember the last time, when the USSR spent itself into dissolution trying to out-macho a chest-beating Repub US president.

It’s post-Rogoway FA. Nothing to see here. 

This is not news.

You can buy a Mach 2.2 Capable Airplane for the price of a Koenigsegg* Read more

I’m not going to go that far, but: IIRC Thatcher wanted to do the full job back then. Go all the way, kick Saddam not just out of Kuwait, but also out of power in Iraq. At the time, Iraq still had something like a viable underground opposition movement and not too many religious nuts, as well as a relatively… Read more

Uh oh... where’s LouisTheroux to jump in here and say this story is just pro-American propaganda and the real door-kick-down was by European forces who charged in on horseback 10 years before the US arrived and used lances to disable Iraqi radars and that Britain and the Europeans would have taken care of Saddam… Read more